Last night we had British Gas give us a quote for a new boiler (they have a deal whereby you save £400 if you sign on the dotted line before the end of August). Anyway, though they were very efficient, explained things clearly and quite approachable, they also quoted (are you sitting down?) £4600 for a suitable boiler, installation, removal of old bits and the fitting of three new radiators (pipework in place).

I felt this was - how shall I put this? - somewhat high...

I can get a similar standard of boiler for around a grand delivered. What I'd like to know is roughly how much is typical for a decent, qualified installer (with the right paperwork, etc.) to fit a customer-supplied gas boiler - assuming that the pipework is otherwise in good order, and ignoring for now the fitting of the new radiators (which we could also supply). I suspect it's somewhat lower than £3k, but I have no idea what the going rate would roughly be...

Cheers,

John

John,

I would guess that you would be talking of no more than two days work for a competent Corgi registered gas fitter allowing for some piping modifications. With this in mind the cost should be in the region of £1000.00.

I think on average they charge between £40 - £50 Hr.

Regards

Justyn.

Thanks, that seems much more reasonable - the BG bloke confirmed that all looked well with the pipework, and that it wasn't a hugely complex job (as they go). However, £4.6k is a HECK of a lot of money for such a thing, I feel, even if it does include the radiators and such.

£2k seems much more to my liking, and even that's a lot of money (i.e. a new pair of speakers, say)...

John

John,

I,m sure you could even improve on the figure I,ve given you. I assume your talking of a combination boiler, you may wan't to check out your local Travis Perkins. (They regularly have promotions and offers domestic boilers, you don't need to be in the trade to get a discount.)

The critical thing is to make sure that the person / company installing the unit is Corgi registered. This link may help you in finding a registered installer near you.

http://www.corgi-gas-safety.com/

Best of Luck.

Justyn.

Seems a bit steep to me. I paid British Gas £2300ish for boiler, new lounge radiator, new timer and thermostat.

COsting (from memory) goes like this:

New boiler: condensing combi, 129kBTU: £3600 inc. installation
Two replacement radiators including fitting: £450
One replacement radiator including relocation: £300
System flush & seal: £??? can't recall.
...and it all included installation of BMU, thermostats, new valves for old radiators which are to be replaced, etc.

I've found a comparable boiler, a Tristar Optima condensing combi, which is a 95k BTU unit (which is all we actually need), for £1000 on the web. Looks like a decent boiler, though if there's dirt to be dished then by all means let me know. I'm thinking in terms of reliability and future parts availability as much as on initial price.

If I can get the boiler work done for £2k including the fitting of 2 radiators, I'll be delighted.

Neil W., are you out there, mate? Do you fancy that 'Fife Gig' I once mentioned in passing? Accommodation, beer and good food provided, plus good sounds too...???

John

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Top Cat,

John

"Which?" did a reasonable report on boiler installations:BG came out of it pretty poorly with over-inflated prices: 2 main reasons for this:The salespeople[including the boiler servicemen if they "recommend" a change] get a commission for each one sold and they sell the boiler at retail price and add on fitting[ they claim their boiler prices are "low" because they have to add on installations costs].CORGI registration does not mean a guarantee of high quality.
Suggest you get 3 quotes and make sure that you ask each one whether this includes a high pressure flush-out of your existing system to ensure new boiler doesn't get sludged up.I'd advise caution if they don't know what you're on about.Also ask them for references or contact no.of recent installations.

We are looking to replace an ancient oil boiler with a condensing one which will involve quite a lot of work and the quote we've had is approx.3K including 6days work, so the BG quote seems inordinately high IMHO

Simon

Hi John

I had a new boiler fitted last summer;
I paid £1100 for a 125Kbtu boiler plus 4 days labour at £350pd - in London - Scotland should have cheaper labour!?
As an additional job, he changed a rusty rad for
£80 labour (plus £50 for the new rad)

He told me about a job he had done recently for
£4.5K where the customer had previously
been quoted £23K for the same work!!

BG will sell you 'piece of mind' for £1500!!!


Keith

I've just had a quote (this week) for fitting a Baxi combi boiler, removing the redundant water tanks etc of £1450 all-in, if I just want a normal boiler the cost would be £1000 fitted. These are prices in the central belt of Scotland so they should compare directly to yours.

Interesting. I'd be shocked and stunned if it only cost £1000 fitted - the cheapest I've seen a suitable boiler is around £800 and that's not a particularly good one - again, size of property pushes the boiler cost up.

I've approached a (very) local installer for a quote so we'll see how that goes. The installer is apparently happy to install a customer-provided boiler, so long as it's nothing unusual or unsuitable. I'm beginning to get a better feeling in my gut that I'm not going to be fleeced as badly as I'd feared...

John

Most Quality Combi boilers can be bought online for a medium size house for about £700.

I need 100k BTU or thereabouts. £1000 buys a fairly decent boiler in that range. I'd be inclined to buy a better boiler for a few hundred extra as that's a small amount of the total, versus 'cheaping out' and then having to go through the same thing in ten years time...

John

Just to say that we had a boiler fitted (wrongly, as it later turned out) by a CORGI registered bloke who cut corners. It was a combi boiler and it took about 20 (no kidding) trips to fix it. Naturally we lost confidence in the bloke that fitted it early in the proceedings, so even if the fitter offers a guarantee, the guarantee's not going to be worth anything if you don't want to let them near the thing again. The boiler people (Baxi) didn't want to know as it broke down in month 13 rather than month 12. We had lots of local people in but in the end only BG could fix it (by then, we had it covered under their warranty so it didn't cost us directly).

If I were doing it again (and I'll have to, soon - we've moved house since) I'd try to avoid BG for fitting (though their service agreements can be worth having) and get a local plumber ON RECOMMENDATION. Corgi registration is a necessary but not sufficient qualification.